


anything that can't be left behind

by inlovewithnight



Category: Manchester By The Sea (2016)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-09 17:26:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8902534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight
Summary: But he couldn’t say any of that to Uncle Lee. He let Lee alone to do what he wanted, live how he wanted, die how he wanted. That was in the blood, too, probably.





	

Patrick really didn’t plan to go to college. He was going to graduate from high school, get the boat back from whoever was renting it, and open the charter business back up. In his dad’s memory, or whatever. It wasn’t like he wanted to stay in Manchester forever, but it wasn’t like he really had any reason to want to leave, either.

But the hockey team played in a couple pretty big-name tournaments his senior year, and there were a couple scouts there, and he ended up with a scholarship to Robert Morris University to play on a D-1 team. 

He warmed the bench a lot. His GPA hovered somewhere around the bare minimum needed to stay eligible for the team. The school was in a suburb of Pittsburgh called Moon, which was about as exciting as the surface of one. They went into Pittsburgh when they wanted a good time, and that just said it all, didn’t it.

Still. He played hockey, he partied, he took whatever classes they told him to take that would add up to a BS in Hospitality and Tourism Management. 

(The degree was George’s idea; he thought it would come in useful for running charters. It made sense to Patrick once he explained it. 

Lee had just shrugged when Patrick asked for his opinion. Lee didn’t seem to really believe Patrick was going to college at all, even though he was the one who had brought it up first.)

**

In the summers he alternated between George’s house and Lee’s spare room. They both felt familiar as anything. He could smell the water from George’s house, just like the house he grew up in. The voices were familiar, the sounds of the cars on the street moving at small-town paces. 

Lee’s place smelled like home, too, but in a different way—it smelled like his dad, kind of. Lee probably used the same deodorant or body wash or something, a shared habit from their childhood. Or maybe _he_ just smelled the same, something genetic in sweat and skin. Patrick never bothered trying to sort it out. 

And Lee’s place sounded like home with the same cycle of sports on the TV, the clink of empty beer bottles being moved around to make room for full ones, the low cursing of a drunk making it from couch to bathroom to bed.

**

Patrick graduated in four years, which surprised him as much as anybody else. George’s whole family came out for his graduation. Randi and her family came. Elise sent a card and a check and left a long, sobbing voicemail on his phone; he deleted it without figuring out the words.

Lee was there, too, wearing the same suit he wore to the funeral. 

“Did he ride out here with you?” Patrick asked George after the ceremony, when they were all waiting outside one of the nicer pub-style restaurants downtown. Patrick had never been drinking here; his ex-girlfriend’s mom told him it would be a good place to get reservations for after graduation. 

He had not made reservations. So now they were all stuck standing around, waiting for a table to clear. “Or did he drive on his own?”

George glanced over his shoulder, as if Patrick would ask that with Lee standing right there. “He drove on his own. I offered, said he could ride with us, but. Well.”

“Yeah.” Lee being Lee. “I just wondered. It’s no big deal.”

“He’s so stubborn.”

“I know it.” Patrick rubbed at his jaw, watching Lee stand next to George’s wife, staring off into the air like he could see something way different from the courtyard the rest of them were looking at. “Bet you ten bucks that after we eat he’s gonna hug me and then say he has to get back for work in the morning.”

George laughed and shook his head, shoving his hands deep into his pockets and looking down at the floor. “No bet, cause he already told me that’s what he’s gonna do.”

“Jesus Christ.” Part of Patrick wanted to laugh—knew he should laugh—after all, it was pretty funny, how fuckin’ predictable Lee was. But the rest of him was white-hot angry. Fuck Lee anyway. “He’s gonna fall asleep and drive off the damn highway.”

“Patty. He won’t do that.”

They both knew damn well that if he didn’t, it wasn’t from any good sense on his part. Patrick let it go. Most days he would fight about it anyway, but today he just wanted to pretend they’re all at least sort of happy. Neither of his parents were there. That had to be enough shitty luck for one day.

**

Lee was going to drink himself to death. That was something Patrick knew, without question. 

He would either get in a fight while drunk and hit his head and die, or get in a car wreck while drunk, and die, or else his liver would deteriorate and give up on him a few years down the line. And he would die.

Patrick kinda thought the liver route would be fucking perfect. Like his dad’s congestive heart failure, only in the liver, and something Lee did to his own goddamn self. The parallels, or whatever. Perfect.

He wasn’t stupid enough to ever say anything to Lee about drinking. Not even once, not even “Think you’ve had enough?” Patrick drank like a fish himself. It was in the blood. 

Patrick could also fall asleep without it, a couple nights a week at least. When he finished the last can in the fridge, he could leave it empty overnight. And if he ever puked up something as highly questionable as his uncle did on the regular, he would go stone-cold-turkey sober on the spot.

But he couldn’t say any of that to Uncle Lee. He let Lee alone to do what he wanted, live how he wanted, die how he wanted. That was in the blood, too, probably.

**

When he finished at Robert Morris, he got an offer to come try out for an ECHL team in West Virginia. The Wheeling Nailers, was the name, and at first he thought it was some kind of prank ,until he Googled it and confirmed it was real. 

The ECHL was a pro league, just barely. He would make about $400 a week during the season, but the team paid for his housing. It would be smashmouth hockey, all the time, and there was no way he could climb up out of that into anything higher. He knew his own talent enough to know that he was strictly out there as cannon fodder for the guys who _did_ have potential. 

Still, it was a chance to call himself a professional hockey player. And it letshim put off being a real adult with real responsibilities for another year or two.

He talked to George about it, and they agreed it was a cool opportunity that he should at least give a try. George promised he would keep an eye on the boat. It was on its third lease to different people, and Patrick knew that if he didn’t get it back and put some real cash into its upkeep soon, it would be too beaten up to bother with. But another year or two wouldn’t hurt. He told himself that until he believed it.

He thought not telling Lee that he was going at all, honestly. It was spiteful and bratty but… Lee hadn’t gotten any better as the years went by. Patrick could convince himself he wasn’t getting worse, either, right up until he saw him in person. Then he had to admit, every time, that Lee was falling apart. 

So he told him, on the phone because he was a chickenshit who didn’t want to have to see the falling-apart pieces again. And Lee said “Wow,” and “Are you sure?” and “Well, congratulations, Patty.”

Patrick pulled the phone away from his ear to stare at it, then made himself swallow and breathe and talk again. “You gonna come see me play?”

“Sure, of course. When I can get away for it.”

Patrick managed not to say that he wouldn’t hold his breath waiting on that to happen. He grew up a whole fucking lot at college.

**

Lee came to a handful of games over Patrick’s two years on the Nailers. George and the family made it to maybe a double handful. His mom didn’t come to any. All in all Patrick felt pretty damn lucky with how it worked out.

The puck bunnies in the ECHL were something else. He had figured West Virginia was all jokes about hillbillies and girls with no teeth who fucked their cousins, and he was way off. The opportunities for pussy around the team were just fine.

Then he met Alyssa at the laundromat by his shitty apartment. She didn’t know anything about hockey and didn’t seem real interested in learning. But she had the sweetest smile he had ever seen. 

Two months later the Nailers let him know they were letting his contract end with the season, and that was a sign if he’d ever seen one. He went to the mall and bought a $50 ring, drove over to Alyssa’s shitty apartment, and asked her if she would come back to Massachusetts with him in the spring.

**

Patrick tried to explain Lee to Alyssa, but there really wasn’t any way to do it that didn’t come out sounding pretty terrible. The pieces all came together to make him sound like an unreliable drunk who was too self-destructive to be relied on.

Of course, Patrick couldn’t come up with any reasons that that _wasn’t_ true. Everything he said made it worse; her eyes kept getting harder and her jaw setting tighter the more he talked.

“I don’t know,” he said finally, throwing his hands up in defeat. “He’s my uncle. I don’t hate him.”

“But you don’t trust him, either.”

“Of course I trust him.”

She gave him this sharp, disbelieving look and he couldn’t think of a damn thing to say in response, so he went out back for a smoke, and she let him go.

They were living in his parents’ little house in Manchester, slowly going through the process of renovating one room at a time. George and the boys came over to help when Patrick needed extra hands and big bodies. A few times Patrick talked about calling Lee and seeing if he could come up, but Alyssa always got funny about it and anyway it wasn’t like spending time with Uncle Lee was much fun for Patrick, either, and it just… never quite happened.

Nobody could make a living running charter anymore. Patrick did that on the weekends and drove a school bus during the week. Alyssa worked at one of the hotels and talked about getting her nursing license. They got by. 

School bus drivers were union employees, with damn good health insurance. It came in handy when the baby was born. They named him Joseph Adam, after his father and hers, and Patrick left four messages telling Lee to come up and meet him. 

Lee never called back.

**

The second baby came a year later, and Patrick got himself snipped before the due date even came. Two was enough. Two was plenty. 

They named her Georgia Lee, after his short- and longer-term guardians. He hadn’t seen Lee in years, by that point, but it still felt right. Alyssa even agreed to it, so it _had_ to be right.

Patrick didn’t give Lee an option with Georgia. He drove down to Boston, to the last address he had for the old man, and pounded on the door. He wanted to shout his uncle’s name, maybe cuss him out a little, but if Lee didn’t even live here anymore and he scared some other poor old bastard for no reason… well, that would be embarrassing. He just knocked, and waited, and just as he was getting ready to knock again, the door opened.

It took a few seconds for Patrick to recognize him, but it was Lee. His skin was tinged gray, his eyes yellow, and the way his skin hung on his bones wasn’t anything close to healthy, but the set of his jaw when he realized who was standing there was just the same. He still had all his hair, too. Patrick might catch a break in that department.

“Hi, Uncle Lee,” he said. “Been a while.”

“Hey, Patty.” His voice was cool and guarded; that hadn’t changed. “What’re you doing here?”

“You didn’t answer my messages. I left enough of them that you must’ve gotten at least one.”

Lee nodded slightly, acknowledging without accepting any blame. “Congratulations on the baby.”

“Thanks. I’m here to take you up to see her and Joey.”

Lee shook his head. “Nah, Patty. Let’s not have this fight.”

“It doesn’t have to be a fight. You get in the car and come with me. You see them. Talk with me and Alyssa for a few hours. Maybe go over and see George. And then I’ll bring you home.”

He just kept shaking his head, standing there with his hands shoved in his pockets. “I can’t do it.”

“What do you mean you can’t? You don’t have to _do_ anything. Just act like a goddamn human being for a couple hours. You can’t do that?”

The look Lee gave him was empty and raw in a way that made Patrick want to rock back on his heels or take a step down off the porch. “Go home to your family, Patrick.”

“You’re my family too, Uncle Lee.”

Lee takes a breath at that, his gaze shifting out across the street, his shoulders hunching more and his hands sliding deeper into his pockets. “I know. But the two parts can’t meet up together, all right? I can’t do it.”

Patrick did take a step back then, tilting his head back to look at the sullen gray sky. “Is this gonna happen to me someday? Am I just gonna wake up one morning and give up on life?”

Lee didn’t flinch. “Not unless you make some pretty bad mistakes. Ones you can’t take back.”

“You could try fuckin’ forgiving yourself, you know.”

“I have tried, Patrick. It didn’t take.” Lee’s voice aches in Patrick’s ears. He didn’t know you could _hear_ sorrow like that. “You got kids of your own now. You should be able to understand it.”

The next step back brought Patrick to the sidewalk. “Am I at least your emergency contact or something, Uncle Lee? So I’ll know when you fuckin’ die, instead of just…”

“I’m not gonna die yet, Patty.”

“Maybe call me once in a while so I know you haven’t. Or text. Something.”

Lee nodded. “I’ll work on that.”

Patrick wanted to turn, walk back to the car, and get gone from this sad fucking story. But some part of him—that came from his dad, he knew it—made him open his mouth one more time. “You want to grab something to eat before I go back? I’m starving and it’s a lousy drive.”

Lee almost smiled. “Yeah. Okay. New bar down the street does decent fish and chips, if that works for you.”

Patrick nodded and Lee stepped back inside to get his shoes and his keys. Waiting for him under the gloomy sky, breathing in the cool damp air, thinking about fish and chips and beer with the game on over the bar—it was almost like being two regular guys. Maybe they could keep it that way, just between the two of them, keep everything else at arm’s length for a while. Just for an hour.

**

Patrick detoured down to the marina when he got back to Manchester. He walked down to the water and stood for a while with his hands in his pockets, his jacket collar up against the wind. He watched the clouds racing over the water and the waves moving against the horizon like a heartbeat. He listened to the ocean moving in and out, the slow moaning breath of the whole world, and he asked whatever might exist out there beyond human imagination to please let him get through this life without fucking it up.


End file.
